


The Return of the Legends

by morwen_of_gondor



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Canon Rewrite, Fix-It, Gen, Hero-Villain Team Up, Nobody knows, Snoke is a budget Sith master, The First Order, The Legends characters are Not Amused by their canon counterparts, because canon is dumb, they're constructed from Script Necessity and Plot Holes, where does the First Order get all those ships?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24101659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morwen_of_gondor/pseuds/morwen_of_gondor
Summary: In the world of Star Wars Legends, Luke Skywalker learns what his canon counterpart has been up to, and decides that things have gone too far. He recruits a team that spans both sides of an intergalactic conflict between the New Jedi Order and the Sith to face a far more insidious foe: the new Star Wars canon.Inspired by this post:https://worgjen.tumblr.com/post/175406289025and a comic I couldn't find the link to in which Gandalf fixes the ending of The Hobbit trilogy, by chewing everyone out.
Comments: 58
Kudos: 62





	1. The Problem

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched the Original Trilogy recently, and a lot of complaining about the Sequels ensued, so have a crack fix-it.
> 
> Fair warning: I have seen TFA and TLJ exactly once each, and I have not watched Rise of Skywalker at all, nor do I intend to. I'm not doing a lot of research for this, since it's already absurd, so beware canon discrepancies.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legends Luke learns about the canon universe, and concludes that Something Must Be Done.

Sitting in his living room in the world of Star Wars Legends, Luke Skywalker, Grandmaster of the New Jedi Order, watched in horror as his aged self stared wordlessly at a girl who was carrying his old lightsaber…and then took it and threw it away, the camera briefly cutting away to show his beloved and remarkably efficient X-wing half-wrecked and submerged in water. He slammed the "stop" button on his inter-universal holoterminal, and buried his face in his hands. "My nephew is such an even worse Sith Lord than alternate-me is a Jedi, the Imperial Remnant has built an even bigger Death Star, somebody neglected to include any kind of character development that would make that girl less than a terrible Mary Sue, poor kid, and on top of it all, my stupid alternate self, after shoving my nephew off the cliff of the Dark Side, has decided to go be a hermit, like that ever helped the Jedi before, and he hasn’t even given himself a way off his planet! I’ve never been so ashamed of myself in my _life,_ and that’s not even me!"

He raised his head, resolve forming in his eyes. "I’ve got to do something."

Comming his very much real, and thoroughly competent, Sith nephew, was not ordinarily something Luke would consider doing, but this? This was not an ordinary situation.

Darth Caedus looked very surprised as he answered his commlink, but recovered quickly, plastering a cheerful and slightly psychotic grin across his face. "Hello, Uncle," he said. "Come to try to drag me back to the Light again? It would really work better if you came in person, but I’m afraid you’re doomed to failure either way."

"No," Luke replied. Caedus’ jaw dropped. Clearly that was _not_ the answer he had expected. "I have a bigger problem, and I think you might share my interest in solving it."

Caedus’ grin turned predatory, and interested. "Ooh, the Grandmaster of the New Order himself is ready to team up with a Sith Lord. Do tell."

Han and Leia were not entirely sure what they were supposed to do when Luke walked into their house, closely followed by Mara Jade (which was not a surprise at all) and their wayward son (which was very much a surprise), none of them either spitting death threats or pleading in passionate terms for the other to return to the Light. Jaina took up a defensive stance just in case, but dropped it when neither Luke nor Caedus ignited their lightsabers.

"Uncle has brought it to my attention that there is an alternate universe in which the Sith have decayed to a pitiful, conflicted, whimpering cabal of teenagers," Caedus snarled. "And your precious New Republic has utterly failed to contain them."

"In other words," Luke said, "we have a common goal now."

"Beat sense into my mewling counterpart,"

"Give that girl some proper combat training and maybe even a convincing motive," Mara Jade added,

"And find my idiot alternate self and drag him out of exile, and maybe fix you guys’ marriage up in the process," Luke finished.

"Wait, what?" Han and Leia said, in unison.

By the time they had finished watching the transmission Luke’s inter-universal holoterminal had picked up, confusion had given way to grim resolve. "I can’t believe any version of myself would be stupid enough to walk away from Leia like that," Han said in confusion. "I mean, she’d kill me." 

"You’ve got that right," Leia said, though she softened it by sliding an arm through his.

"So what are we doing?" Jaina asked, still staring distrustfully at Caedus.

"Well," Luke said, "it’s pretty simple. We find a way into this alternate universe, I go find my alternate self, Han does the same with his, Leia goes and finds out what’s wrong with the New Republic’s government, and Caedus goes to get the Imperial Remnant back up to something worth fighting. And he finds out where they’re getting all those ships, and gets rid of the ones that were deus-ex-machina-ed in."

"I have just one problem with this plan," Caedus said. "I am apparently supposed to rejuvenate the Sith entirely by myself — and though I am perfectly up to the task, I find it somewhat unfair that the Light is to have so many defenders to the Dark’s one, especially as I will be reducing the forces of the Imperial Remnant to a credible level."

"Well," Luke said pensively, "there is someone else we could call, although he’s not exactly a Sith…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find out who the mysterious next recruit is next week!


	2. Building the Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke calls an old enemy, and the way between worlds is revealed.

Grand Admiral Thrawn had found death much less annoying than he had expected. For one thing, it seemed that in this now-nebulous world of so-called "Legends," as long as a fair number readers were interested in you, you weren’t _dead_ per se. Being not-quite-dead meant he had all the time he wanted to study art and argue with Rukh about his assassination (artistic as it was, it had lacked a crucial element of tactical planning, namely an exit strategy for the assassin). Both of these pastimes confused Captain Pellaeon very much, and that was entertaining in and of itself. When Pellaeon got tired of being confused and made Rukh stop arguing with him, he could always call Thrass, who was also not-quite-dead and finding it a little boring, and argue about — or, on one memorable occasion, haunt — the government of the Chiss Ascendancy. He even brought the Imperial Remnant’s forces to bear on the Yuuzhan Vong once in a while, although this was made challenging by the fact that he and the forces he led could only kill or otherwise affect beings who were not currently appearing in a book. (Being partially dead did have its drawbacks.)

Thrawn was not expecting his commlink to ping him during one of his arguments with Rukh. He was expecting to see Luke Skywalker’s face even less.

Then he watched, in horror, as Skywalker’s comm feed switched over to what the Jedi called an "inter-universal link," and an oversized humanoid in a bathrobe and carpet-slippers started blathering about power and Sith and empire to a constipated-looking man who was carrying a badly-designed helmet, and he realised that _this was the Imperial remnant_. Then the schematics of an absolute monstrosity, evidently called Starkiller Base, rose into view. Thrawn finally found his voice, and spat, "WHAT? They built _another Death Star?_ "

The feed switched back to showing the user’s face, and to Thrawn’s surprise, he met the glowing amber eyes of Darth Caedus, who was, for once, standing next to his twin sister Jaina Solo without evident animosity. "Something," Caedus hissed, "must be done. This is not the Dark Side. This is…a @#$%^!" (Here he inserted a string of Huttese profanity which both his family and Grand Admiral Thrawn absolutely refused to repeat for the record, although his father did express admiration for his son’s creativity.)

"What do you propose?" Thrawn asked.

"Uncle here," Caedus said, "has had the bright idea of smacking some sense into his alternate self. And, in the interests of balance in the Force and all that, he’s agreed to bring me along. Mostly because he needs me to open the gate of course, but I’m not complaining. Are you in?"

"Do you even need to ask?"

"Excellent," Luke said, taking the commlink back from Caedus rather forcefully. "I’ll transmit the coordinates where we’ll need to meet."

After a string of coordinates came through, Thrawn gazed curiously at the starmap. "This is empty space," he said.

"Well, yes and no," Luke said, looking a little uncomfortable. "It’s not empty space if you have the right powerful Force users with you."

"Which is why he needs me," Caedus put in from off the screen.

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed. "I trust that the presence of ysalamiri will not incommode your plan too much." Just because he couldn’t die again did not mean he was interested in being Force-choked or electrocuted if either Caedus or the person with the carpet slippers lost his temper.

Luke considered. "I don’t know if they’ll actually be able to do much on Mortis," he said, "but I see no reason why you can’t bring them."

"I do," Leia said angrily from the side.

"So do I," Solo rejoined.

Luke elbowed someone away from the terminal and sighed. "Just meet us there. If they can deal with having Caedus along, they can deal with you and a few ysalamiri. Just don’t try to nullify the Force throughout your whole ship, or you might not be able to make it through the gate."

He terminated the call, but not before there was a scuffling noise and a yelp in the background. Thrawn wondered absently who had thrown the first punch and why, but he was not really terribly concerned with it. This was the Skywalker-Solo family, after all. He turned to Pellaeon, who had been watching with respectful interest, tempered by distinct disapproval of the alternate universe’s existence, from the background.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn is turning up in everything I write lately somehow, but I'm not complaining too much.
> 
> Also, if Mortis is involved, you can do whatever you want, right? (Hey, it appears in both Legends and Canon universes. So if there is a Star Wars multiverse, then Mortis is a place where the two universes intersect, so it's possible to travel from universe to universe. Right?)


	3. The Light Side: The Jedi Master

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke meets Luke. He's not impressed.

On Ahch-To, Luke Skywalker sat in quiet meditation, staring out over the sea which covered his last means of return to the rest of the galaxy. The Jedi Order had failed; the world were better off without the last member of a discredited sect, and the destruction of his X-wing had only served to protect him against moments of weakness which tempted him to return and inflict the curse of the Skywalker bloodline on the galaxy once more.

He had left a map to his location, in one such moment of weakness, but he did not expect anyone to use it. They knew that they didn’t need him. He was therefore more than slightly surprised when the familiar roar of an X-wing’s engine shattered his silence into a million pieces and a very familiar looking fighter landed smoothly on a precarious outcropping.

Luke had to admit that alternate-him had at least chosen a reasonably pleasant place to be a hermit, as opposed to the burning sands of Tatooine or the impenetrable swamps of Dagobah. The general air of self-pity which he was picking up in the Force, issuing from a presence that was at once intimately familiar and emphatically _unfamiliar,_ however, rather spoiled the spectacular view. Not to mention that the sight of his beloved X-wing, even in alternate form, all but damaged beyond repair and carelessly submerged in the sea, was truly painful. _If Artoo was in that, I might just suffer a little temptation to the Dark Side long enough to steal one of Dad’s techniques,_ he thought wryly.

There were few places where an X-wing could land safely on the island which was putting off the strongest aura of navel-gazing misery, but he found a large enough flat spot near the top and landed carefully. Popping the canopy up, he spotted an older man seated, evidently meditating, near the edge of the precipitous drop into the ocean. There was no way that he hadn’t noticed the sound of the landing fighter, but evidently he was feeling pretentious. Luke was unpleasantly reminded of Joruus C’baoth and reassured himself by reaching into the Force, which, while full of the above-mentioned self-pity, gave no indication of Darkness. While he was there, he gave his alternate self’s presence a sharp mental prod and had the satisfaction of seeing him twitch, though he still refused to turn around.

 _All right then, stubborn it is,_ he thought, then took a page from Han’s book and yelled, "Hey!"

That did the trick, and Luke met his own eyes, not in a mirror, for the second time in his life. _And really that should never even happen once._

Other-Luke (that was a safe name to use, more or less) was staring at him like he was an hallucination, which was probably what he felt he was facing, never having met a clone of himself. He was either too stubborn or too surprised to speak, so Luke plunged right in. "What are you doing out here being useless? This whole mess is your fault."

Other-Luke remained silent, but his eyes were slowly widening and his jaw looked just about ready to fall to the floor. _In for a penny, in for a pound,_ Luke thought, and said, "Your nephew didn’t Fall, you shoved him off the cliff!"

The Force roiled with guilt. _I know,_ it said, just as other-Luke opened his mouth for the first time and said just that.

"You know, huh?" Luke folded his arms. "Well, why haven’t you done anything about it?"

"What was there to do?" _Weariness,_ the Force whispered. _Despair._

Luke rolled his eyes. "Look, I know at some point you and I must have thought alike, because we stood in front of the Emperor and _threw away our lightsabers_." (And wasn’t it weird referring to himself in the plural, but that was a topic for later.)

"We went after Darth Vader. Darth Vader who blew up Alderaan and made Leia watch, and we’re going to talk about what you’ve done to Leia later, by the way. Darth Vader who tortured Han. And we _brought him back_ to the Light, which was supposed to be impossible. You remember that, right? So far so good.

"Now here’s where I stop understanding you. Your nephew was a boy who looked up to you. He was barely tempted to the Dark Side and _you tried to kill him?_ And now you can’t think of a way to bring him back. How about apologising for being a complete and utter failure as a Jedi master? For starters?"

Other-Luke was shielding his emotions now, but this was still _him_ he was looking at, and he knew what guilt and conflict looked like in his own eyes.

"He wouldn’t have listened."

"I’m pretty sure that’s what everybody thought about Vader, too."

"I saw it."

"I seem to remember the Emperor saying that he’d foreseen us turning. _And_ you wrecked our X-wing!"

Other-Luke winced at that. "Artoo wasn’t in it," he said defensively.

"Congratulations, you just prevented a Fall to the Dark Side," Luke said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Seriously, though, I might have Force-choked you for wrecking Artoo. But. Back to the point. Get off this planet and go after your nephew."

"There’s nothing I can do for him," Other-Luke cried, throwing his hands in the air.

"That," Luke said, advancing towards his counterpart and shaking a finger in his face, "is a load of bantha poodoo and you know it. You’re making every single mistake that Yoda and Obi-Wan did, and making it worse than they ever did. That kid out there? He isn’t a Sith Lord. He’s barely a Sith Apprentice. I’ve only ever seen him via holo-comm and I can _feel_ the mess he is, thanks to your little attempted murder stunt, but it’s not a controlled mess, it’s a toddler’s tantrum. Sith choose to feel anger and hatred, they channel it. He’s barely got enough emotional control to function. You talked down a Sith, and you can’t talk down a toddler? That’s pretty pitiful."

Other-Luke crossed his arms and scowled. Luke recognised the signs of himself about to be absolutely unbearable, and suddenly he had had it. "Maybe I should have let Thrawn talk to you after all, but no, I was going to be nice."

"Who?" _Curiosity,_ the Force said, and at least that was better than the unrelenting miasma of _guilt—grief—despair—self-pity_. 

That didn’t mean Luke was pleased, though. "Grand Admiral Thrawn, a non-Force Sensitive Imperial who would probably be a better Jedi than you at this point!"

"My ship is broken," Other-Luke said defensively.

"You’re the son of the galaxy’s biggest mechanical genius, and ridiculously powerful with the Force, but nooooo, always with you it cannot be done. When I make it back, I am so apologising to Yoda for being such an idiot of an apprentice."

"I don’t have any spare parts!"

"Waaaaah."

"I’m serious!"

"Call the waaaaambulance."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"I dunno, how about get it out of the water for starters. Or is that impossible too?"

Other-Luke was _pouting_ , and Luke sent a fervent mental apology to Yoda again, even though he didn’t think he’d ever worn that particular face after his sixteenth birthday. But it seemed that Luke had won his point. His counterpart put his hand out — the mechanical one, bare of synthflesh now — and Luke felt the Force swell, not with self-pity now, but with a kind of chastened determination. _Tell him that you have spare parts, when will you?_ asked a familiar-unfamiliar voice at the back of his mind.

 _When he’s worked off his sulks,_ Luke replied. _Have I mentioned that I’m sorry?_

 _Sorry, you should not be. Sorry_ he _should be._

_I think the whole problem was that he was a little too sorry._

_Sorry in the wrong way he was. Helped that you have, when help I could not. A good man you are, my Padawan of another world._ Luke felt a three-fingered hand briefly grasp his shoulder.

 _Thank you._

Annoyed as he still was, Luke wasn’t a vindictive man, so once the dripping, salt-caked X-wing had landed next to his pristine one, he revealed the box of spare parts he’d brought along. Of course, he could just have taken a larger ship, but he had the feeling that fixing something concrete and comparatively small would be a good place to start with smacking his alternate self into shape. When he’d felt the swell of excitement in the Force as he brought out his toolbox and hefted his Artoo out of the astromech socket to help with the repairs, he knew that it had been an accurate one.

There was no way to make the half-ruined X-wing space-worthy in one night, and Other-Luke didn’t seem to want to go back to his hermitage — it probably still reeked of regret, so Luke didn’t blame him — so they spent the night in the open. Ahch-To was a fairly temperate planet, and now that he’d made some progress with his idiot other self, Luke could finally enjoy it. He had one more thing to do before he went to sleep though, so he pulled out his commlink. The person on the other end picked up almost at once. "Skywalker," he said, with a respectful nod.

"Thrawn," Luke replied, returning the nod. "What’s your status?"

Thrawn’s red eyes were blazing fire now. "These people are utter _imbeciles,_ " he gritted out. "I am frankly uncertain how they managed to maintain a functional military as long as they have."

"And Starkiller Base?"

Thrawn _hissed,_ a _surprisingly reptilian_ sound, and Luke nearly dropped his comm. He hadn’t known Chiss could make that noise.

"That particular tactical and moral abomination will be seen to in its proper place," he assured Luke. "I trust you have found some measure of success?"

"I’ve made a start, at least," Luke replied, glancing over at his sleeping counterpart and the partly-repaired X-wing. "At least he’s stopped flooding the Force with self-pity. Yech."

Thrawn snorted softly. "If only the same could be said of your nephew."

Luke sighed. "I’m not sure I want to know."

"You don’t."

"What about this Snoke, then?"

Thrawn smiled widely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: The Dark Side gets its time in the sun. Find out why Thrawn is smiling...
> 
> Also, while Thrawn is definitely a bad guy in his original trilogy, I get the impression that he is not without a moral code. He definitely objects to unnecessary deaths, hence his description of the Death Star Reboot as a moral abomination.


	4. The Dark Side: The Supreme Leader

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn critiques the First Order's design philosophy and meets Supreme Leader Snoke. If possible, he's even less impressed than Luke was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise in advance for Thrawn's remarkably convoluted sentence structure. His brain is always doing at least three things at the same time, and when I try to write that, it comes out in these massive sentences which, while technically grammatically correct, are a bit daunting.

It had been many years since Thrawn had taken on field missions himself, and he expected skills so long unused to be rather rusty. However, either he remembered more of his past training than he had expected, or the First Order was just that incompetent. Remembering the blatherer in the bathrobe, he was inclined to believe the second.

Rukh was following him, content for the sake of this mission to take his orders once more (though he had made it abundantly clear that that was a very temporary situation) but even Thrawn’s heightened senses could perceive nothing where he knew the Noghri to be.

The senses of the universally human First Order officers clearly also perceived nothing, even as the very much non-human Thrawn, complete with ysalamir frame, deftly threaded his way from shadow to shadow, uniform cap drawn low over his forehead to shield his glowing eyes from casual notice. A little help from Rukh, combined with Pellaeon’s best stern voice of command, had seen him and his bodyguard safely onto "Supreme Leader Snoke’s" ( _ktah,_ but the title was an absurd one; Thrawn supposed it was to make up for the idiot’s lack of actual power) absurdly massive whale of a ship, uncreatively titled the "Supremacy".

He shook his head once more at the odd obsession that Imperial rulers seemed to have with sheer size. The Death Star had been a flawed project from the very beginning: inflexible in its uses, overbearing in its attempted intimidation, and painfully reliant on fighter screens for defence — in short, the product of an overconfident government. Making it again, except larger, after the first one blew up had been an unquestionable tactical error and an immense waste of resources which could have been used to create the most formidable fleet that the galaxy had ever seen. And now this Snoke person had made a _third_ one, a planet-sized one, which was even harder to manoeuvre, more vulnerable to small-scale assault, and had an atmosphere — which meant that anyone could infiltrate it without so much as needing to steal a First Order shuttle.

And, of course, there was this travesty of a battleship he was currently taking such a long walk through, a _Mega-class star dreadnaught_ (incorrectly named; as she was the first of her kind she should be considered a Supremacy-class, for there had never been a ship christened the "Mega" and Thrawn hoped there never would be) which served no apparent purpose other than as a mobile docking station for smaller vessels — not something that the smaller vessels should need, really, they had dry docks for that — and to be impressive. And ugly. And a target for anything with lasers that was somewhere within ten lightyears. Thrawn missed the Chimaera, with her well-trained, observant crew, elegant lines, and efficient manoeuvring capabilities.

As he neared Snoke’s throne room, the personnel grew more observant. _Perhaps there is hope for them yet._ He instructed Rukh to incapacitate, rather than kill, anyone who noticed them. After all, he was here to rebuild the First Order into an Imperial Remnant worth serving, not to destroy it, tempting as the latter was at the moment.

Finally, outside the doors to what must be the ostentatiously large throne room, Thrawn and Rukh were challenged properly. Two men, obviously dressed in imitation of Palpatine’s elite Red Guards, crossed their pikes across the entrance in silent warning.

"I have business with your Supreme Leader," Thrawn said mildly. "You would do well to let me through."

The two guards looked at each other, probably conversing through the commlinks in their helmets, and then looked back to Thrawn. "The Supreme Leader does not speak to his underlings because they wish it. He commands," said one.

Thrawn sighed. The directive was a sensible one, but the wording was just as pompous as he would have expected from the type of petty dictator Snoke was shaping up to be. _Time for the second strategy,_ he thought, and removed the cap which had hidden his glowing red eyes — a feature which he well knew most humans found unsettling. Then he tapped the commlink on his wrist meaningfully. "There is an Imperial Star Destroyer targeting your engines exactly eight klicks out. Let me through those doors or I will blow up this ship before you can make the end of the hall."

Red helmets turned to face each other in silent consultation once more, and this time Rukh struck the instant their eyes were turned away. A little cautious rewiring of the door panel, and Thrawn stepped forward into an enormous, shadowy room dominated by a remarkably large throne, in which sat the blatherer in the bathrobe. Rukh melted into the shadows as Thrawn strode forward to meet the so-called Supreme Leader of the First Order.

He was in no mood to offer pleasantries, and so he did not. "Snoke," he said abruptly, "what in the universe is all this?"

Snoke’s eyes were closed, and he neither opened them nor answered Thrawn’s question directly. "There has been a great disturbance in the Force," he said, "but I can feel nothing from you. You are not the one from another universe who will come to ensure the final overthrow of the New Republic."

 _Interesting. Obviously he is ignorant of ysalamiri, but how did he know that anyone had come from another universe at all?_ Aloud, Thrawn said, "No. I am the one who has come to test your worthiness to lead the Imperial Remnant."

"My worthiness?" Snoke laughed. "I was chosen for this role by Emperor Palpatine himself. Who are you to question my worthiness to lead the First Order to victory over the pitiful Resistance?"

Darth Caedus would have rolled his eyes at that. Thrawn merely raised an eyebrow, and said, "Rukh." _Let us see what you are truly made of, Supreme Leader._

Rukh sprang from the shadows behind Snoke, and even as Snoke turned to face him, Thrawn drew his blaster and fired. A Sith Lord would have Force-choked Rukh and deflected the blaster bolt. An intelligent man without the Force would have hurled himself out of the line of fire and drawn his own weapon. Snoke did neither. Instead, he slumped to the floor, a smoking hole in the back of his head and Rukh’s assassin’s knife spearing his heart.

Rukh stared down at the corpse, then looked up at Thrawn. Thrawn stared down at the corpse, then looked up at Rukh. There was silence for some time.

Thrawn was the one to break it. "How…disappointing. I confess my expectations were low, but they were not this low."

"If he was so foolish as that, he was not worthy to lead," Rukh said in his mewling, gravelly voice.

"Indeed."

Thrawn’s commlink pinged at him, and there was only one person who would be calling him at the moment. "Skywalker," he said, accepting the call.

"Thrawn," said Luke Skywalker respectfully. "What’s your status?"

When Skywalker asked about Snoke, Thrawn didn’t even try to suppress his smile. Removing idiots from the chain of command, though not a hobby Thrawn indulged in often, was really terribly enjoyable, even when accidental.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Thrawn paraphrased Agent Coulson when he was threatening the Red Guards. I couldn't resist. He also quoted Alan Rickman's Professor Snape because that line is truly iconic and it felt appropriate here.


	5. The Light Side: The Rebels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han, meet Han. Rey, meet Mara.
> 
> Chewie and Chewie are both entertained.

Han Solo was about ninety percent certain that he was having a nightmare. He pinched his arm hard. It hurt. The voice yelling, "Hey, idiot!" did not go away. Neither did the Wookiee roars which were saying more or less the same thing.

"Chewie, are you hearing this?"

_Yes. Of course, you are an idiot, but they should not be calling you that in our voices._

Han let his head thud against the console and carefully did not think that his day couldn’t get any worse, because it absolutely could.

Then it did. The Falcon’s ramp opened slowly, and up the ramp walked two very familiar silhouettes. The Wookiee (not Chewie, it couldn’t be, Chewie was next to him) growled a greeting. Chewie returned it, in what sounded like a civil voice.

Han stared into a very good facsimile of his own face, just a bit less weathered. The man wearing it must have gotten the Falcon’s codes from somewhere. And one of Han’s old outfits. And a Wookiee friend who looked suspiciously like Chewie. _Blast it,_ he thought. _I don’t get paid enough for this._

"What the hell are you doing here?" demanded the man who was wearing his face.

Han put on his best sabacc face, crossed his arms, and stared at not-him. "Standing," he said.

Not-him rolled his eyes. Not-Chewie barked a laugh, and said, _I could have told you that you would say that._

"Oh, stop that," said not-him. "I’ve had a headache since we got here and you’re making it worse."

_Well, what should I call you?_

"You mean me or him?"

_Him._

"I dunno, Dumb Han?"

"Hey!" Han said, still shocked but no longer shocked into silence, "I’m right here!"

"Yeah, you are. Not with Leia. Which is why I am Smart Han and you are Dumb Han."

"What?"

Definitely Not Han sighed. "Look, did it not occur to your brilliant mind that she would kill you for pulling a stunt like this?"

"Pretty sure she didn’t want to see me after what I did to Ben."

"No." Not Han walked right up to Han and shook a finger in his face. "No, no, no. That is not how you handle your son turning evil. Trust me, mine did too. It hurt Leia, and it hurt me, but we’re handling it together. _You_ walked away right when she needed you most, laser brain."

Chewie _(which Chewie? No, no, no, there were NOT two of Chewie, there were not two of him. Not happening.)_ roared in mournful agreement.

 _But he’s right,_ said a little voice at the back of his head that sounded like Luke had when he was still young and idealistic. _You did leave her._

Han (who was smart and had not left his gorgeous and slightly terrifying wife when Jacen broke both their hearts) watched as the gears slowly started moving in Dumb Han’s head.

 _He is right,_ Other-Chewie howled. 

"Darn right I’m right," Han said. "Now you two hop on into the Falcon and fly your dumb selves — sorry, Chewie, smart self and dumb self — back to the Rebellion, or the Resistance, or whatever you lot are calling it."

The girl from Luke’s transmission — what was her name? Ren? Oh, Rey, that was it — chose this moment to put her head out of the cockpit. She stared for a moment at the spectacle before her (Han couldn’t blame her) and then turned to Dumb Han and asked, "What is going on?"

"Mara," Han called over his shoulder, "I found what you’re looking for."

Mara Jade Skywalker was the only woman in the galaxy that Han was willing to admit might possibly be as terrifying as Leia. (Nobody was as beautiful, though naturally Luke disagreed on that point.) She looked it now, dressed for combat, with her lightsaber on her hip, as she stepped into the Falcon and looked Rey up and down with an assessing expression. "Hmm," she said. "Looks like we both have our work cut out for us, Han. Come on, kid, let’s see what we can make of you."

"Who are you?" Rey asked.

Mara smiled. "I am, among other things, a Jedi. But more importantly for you, I am a well-written female character with a backstory that makes sense. Now, you’re going to need to figure yours out, and you’re also going to need some combat training. Let’s start with the backstory; we’ll have plenty of time to talk on the way to the Resistance headquarters. We can work on the combat training once we get there."

Rey looked very baffled, but the Force must have been with them, because she sat down at the battered dejarik table and said, "I still don’t understand, but we can talk."

Han restrained himself from throwing his hands in the air and cheering ironically. "Mara, you got the idiots under control?" he asked instead.

Mara looked at Dumb Han and then at Rey. "With Chewie for backup? Yes."

Other-Chewie turned away from his conversation with Han’s Chewie and roared approval. "We’ll meet you there, then," Han said, and turned to get back to his Falcon.

Han _(not_ Dumb Han, thank you very much) punched in the coordinates for the Resistance base and let the conversation from the dejarik table drift past him. Every once in a while he caught a sentence like, "You have to pick likes and dislikes, hon, you can’t just go where the plot leads you," or, "I’m sorry, but nobody faces down a Sith Lord, even a wannabe like Ren, without lots and lots and _lots_ of training. Even if you know how to handle that staff, it’s completely different from a lightsaber, and you’ll have to learn to fight with the Force. It’s not something you can do by instinct."

None of it made much sense, even by Jedi standards, so he tried not to listen too hard. Then Chewie got his attention by growling, _Leia will kill you, you know._

"Yeah, I know. But other-me was right, even if I hate admittin’ it. I gotta go back. The kid seems to have got herself a Jedi teacher with no help from me, but she’ll still want to go to the Resistance, and she should. And maybe Leia’ll kill me a little less if I start by apologising and finish off by bringing her a pair of Jedi."

 _Maybe,_ Chewie grunted back, sounding doubtful.

"You’re not helping."

Two Millennium Falcons touched down in almost perfect unison on the landing field outside the Resistance base. Two Leia Organas, unmistakably similar despite the differences in hairstyle and dress and the fact that one carried a lightsaber while the other did not, awaited their occupants. 

One Han Solo, followed by Chewbacca, stepped out boldly, waved to the lightsaber-wearing Leia cheerfully, and announced, "Your Worship, I found them."

Both Leias rolled their eyes. The one who wore a lightsaber walked over to embrace her Han nevertheless.

The ramp of the other Falcon lowered slowly and jerkily. Chewbacca stepped out and roared something impatiently back up the ramp. Two women walked down, one dressed in the light layered tunics of a desert-dweller and carrying a staff, one dressed in a combination of heavy fabric and light armour plating and carrying a blaster and a lightsaber. "Go on, Rey," said the red-headed Jedi, giving her companion a light shove down the ramp.

"I didn’t know there was this much green in the galaxy," Rey said in wonder.

The Jedi smirked a little, and said, "Well, go explore it then. It seems I will have to drag…well, never mind."

As she spoke, a more weathered edition of Han Solo walked slowly down the ramp, locked eyes with the other Leia, and said, quietly but in a voice that carried, "I’m sorry."

Further conversation was interrupted by the familiar whine of an X-wing’s engines, and once more two ships landed in tandem, a little way down from the Millennium Falcon.

Out of the two X-wings, one of which was noticeably more battered than the other, though it looked to have been recently repaired, sprang two men, both of whom were unmistakably Luke Skywalker. There was now a small crowd of Resistance personnel gathered in a circle around the strange reunion on the landing pad, not even bothering to pretend not to stare. 

The younger Luke, dressed in plain black, strode over to greet the Jedi Leia and her Han before embracing the other Jedi who had come with Rey, whom he addressed as Mara. The elder, clad in the robes of a Jedi, stood uncertainly beside his X-wing. 

"All right," called the first Luke from where he stood with his arm around Mara’s shoulders, "I know everyone here probably has questions. In a little while, it will be time for me to answer them. But first, I’m going to say that nearly all of you you have been running away from your duties in some way. It’s good to see you back, but I need you — the galaxy needs you — not to do it again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia does not get her own meet-up conversation here because she's the only character in Disney Star Wars who has not committed major dereliction of duty and thus does not need to be smacked around. Her conversation with herself was mostly exposition of stuff that the readers already know, so I didn't include it.


	6. The Dark Side: The Sith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren discovers a stranger on board the Finalizer and gets a free trial of proper Sith Apprenticehood.

Kylo Ren strode down the corridors of the Finalizer towards his quarters. For the first time in he did not know how long, he could not feel the Supreme Leader’s presence in his mind. There had been a great upheaval in the Force just now, and it enraged him that just at the moment when he was needed, Snoke had elected to disappear. His preoccupation prevented him from noticing the tightly shielded presence in the passage in front of him, until an otherwise unremarkable brown-haired man in First Order uniform stepped out directly into his path, and raised glowing amber eyes to meet his. Ren stopped short in shock, and was treated to a rather spectacular view in the Force as the stranger dropped layer upon layer of mental shields until he had revealed a swirling black hole of sheer controlled _rage_ in the Force. Kylo was inwardly thankful for his mask, as it prevented the newcomer from seeing how far his jaw had dropped.

"Well, well, well," said the stranger in a sing-song, meditative voice, "what have we here?"

The question put Kylo’s back up. "I ask the questions here," he said haughtily. Then, when the man’s only response was a steady gaze and a distinctly unimpressed raised eyebrow, "I give the commands on this ship! I am in charge here!"

The stranger grinned merrily at him, gold eyes gleaming. _"Do you_ feel _in charge?"_

"I am Supreme Leader Snoke’s apprentice, and a power in the Force unknown since the fall of Lord Vader. What are you? A reject Knight of Ren?"

The stranger put his head on one side, considering. "I am Darth Caedus. I am a Sith Lord, and I have power. You do not. Potential, yes. But not power. You will never have power until you learn control."

"I have control," Ren snarled, reaching for his lightsaber, only to change the motion into a desperate scrabble at his rapidly tightening throat.

Darth Caedus was still smiling. He had not made even the slightest of gestures, and yet Kylo Ren could hardly breathe at all now. "Then use it," he said, voice soft and deadly. "Darth Vader would have snapped my neck twice over by now. Darth Sidious would have burned my body to a smouldering husk with lightning. You are no Sith Lord, you snivelling whelp."

Kylo snarled furiously. Then he reached for that fury and _shoved._ Darth Caedus, caught in a wave of power from the Dark Side, somersaulted elegantly through the air to land on his feet. He released his grip, and Kylo fell to his hands and knees, coughing and drawing in deep breaths. "Well done," he said, for the first time looking at Kylo as though he were more than something unpleasant Caedus had discovered on the sole of his boot. "I can feel your rage, your pain. They are uncontrolled now. The Force rebels against you because you are at war with yourself, and yet you get results, of a kind. I could teach you to turn fear and pain to anger, anger to hatred. I could make you into a true Sith."

"What have you done to Snoke?" Kylo choked out. 

The question was rather a non sequitur, but he felt certain now that this Darth Caedus was connected to his master’s sudden disappearance. "I have done nothing, but something may have happened to him, if he was foolish enough to provoke it," Caedus replied, and pulled out his commlink.

An unfamiliar blue face flickered into existence, red eyes fixed on Caedus. "What is the status of your…discussion…with our friend the Supreme Leader?" Caedus asked.

"The Supreme Leader has proven most disappointing," the blue-faced alien said. 

"I did not expect to need to remind you that we are here to cure, not kill," Caedus replied in a tone that sounded as though he were eating something sour.

"I had no intention of killing," the alien said, sounding rather annoyed. "I simply underestimated his incompetence."

"Unfortunate," was all Caedus said to that. "That he was so incompetent, that is."

"And your progress with his apprentice?"

Caedus cocked his head like an intrigued nexu. "Uncle’s description of him was not far off, but there is potential there if he can learn to control his tantrums."

Kylo felt his face burning. _Had this Caedus just said he had_ tantrums? He reached for the mixture of _anger—embarrassment—pain_ that was swirling behind his shields (yes, he had shields, thank you very much) and shoved again. Caedus put out a hand, and the swell of power simply…split in two. The walls of the corridor rattled and sparked, but Caedus stood unmoved in the centre. "I will inform you of any further progress," he said to his comm, and then turned back to Kylo. "If you wish to be a Sith," he said in the tone of a teacher to a particularly dull student, "your anger should kill."

Kylo noted that the storm of darkness he had released was beginning to gather around Caedus like iron swirling around a magnet, and felt the beginnings of true fear. Caedus continued, unmoving, "Do not unleash it until you are ready to kill, and then you will be both feared and respected." 

His presence was the epicentre of a storm in the Force, and yet outwardly all was calm. "If you cannot control your childish whinging, your men may fear you, but they will never respect you, and you will need the respect of your men if you truly wish to conquer this galaxy."

Kylo wanted to throw Darth Caedus into the walls, or draw his lightsaber and slash through something until his rage had burned out, but, though he had never managed it himself, he knew what the presence of someone about to summon lightning was like, and Snoke had never taught him to deal with that. Besides, he could not deny that the self-styled Sith had a point. He slammed down his shields, hard, and felt his anger crash into them and then recede, still ready and waiting for his call but less overpowering. Caedus smiled in approval, and it was at once grating and gratifying. "You are a quick learner, apprentice," he said. "And it is not your fault that your teacher was a fool. Come with me and I will teach you the ways of the Sith."

Kylo considered. Caedus had already shown that he could conquer Ren in an open battle (much as it grated on his pride to admit that). Snoke was, apparently, dead. Their bond was broken, at least. He needed a teacher. Nothing said that he had to stay with Caedus, or not betray him once he’d learned what he needed to know. For the present…he said, "Yes, master."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Caedus quoted Bane. It felt appropriate.
> 
> Two chapters in one week because this one was already written and waiting to be posted. Caedus vs Kylo Ren was sooooo fun to write.
> 
> I love reading all your comments, so thank you! I have lots of fun seeing how many other people want the Disney Star Wars characters to get smacked upside of the head by their Legends counterparts.


	7. So What's Next?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mortis is a gateway to a great many places, not just in the Star Wars universe. Our characters decide to have some fun before returning to their original continuity.

Some weeks later, Luke, Mara, Leia, and Han rendezvoused with Thrawn and Caedus on the Chimaera. Their work was done: the Resistance had its Jedi back and Rey was showing decided signs of personality under Luke Skywalker’s tutelage, the First Order had been given some very sharp lessons in discipline, and the interfering Sith ghost of Emperor Palpatine had run into a very unpleasant surprise one day, which had left him confined to a holocron (now in the possession of Sith Apprentice Kylo Ren and the alternate Grand Admiral Thrawn). "You know," Luke said, lounging on the bridge of the Chimaera to Captain Pellaeon’s mild disapproval, "I’m going to miss this."

Thrawn found, rather to his surprise, that he would too, and inclined his head respectfully to the Jedi. "Who says it needs to end now?" Caedus asked.

"What do you mean?" Leia said sharply.

"This is Mortis," Caedus said, gesturing to the planet outside the Chimaera’s viewport. "We can go wherever we like."

The six looked at each other. "You wouldn’t happen to know who was responsible for that mess back there, would you?" Han asked. "Because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do that all on my own."

"Actually," Luke said, "I might have an idea…"

Unconfirmed reports of a Star Destroyer hovering over the headquarters of Disney continue to circulate to this day, as do conspiracy theory reports of blue men with glowing red eyes, sometimes accompanied by strange robed individuals, appearing in executive offices.


End file.
